Aviation Week & Space Technology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aviation Week & Space Technology (often abbreviated as Aviation Week or AW&ST) is a weekly magazine. The news content,available in print and online, reports upon the state of the aerospace industry. It is renowned for striking a good balance on reporting between manufacturers and their clients (airlines, governments, etc.) When reporting on factual information, Aviation Week is generally considered to be accurate. The magazine also does a large amount of analysis, which is necessarily speculative. Aviation Week is not normally categorized as a "fan" magazine, and is often seen on the desks of enthusiasts, investment professionals, and aerospace industry professionals alike. Aviation Week also publishes the Aviation Sourcebook, which catalogs aircraft fleet status of the major airlines, air forces/navies, and satellite operators.

Today, as in the past, the magazine has a reputation for its contacts inside the Pentagon. More often than not, new information on black projects, future prototypes and the like are divulged to it unofficially, giving it the nickname "Aviation Leak and Space Mythology" or "Av Leak". For instance, Aviation Week was the first publication to reveal the details of Chuck Yeager's sound barrier-breaking flight, six months before it was intended to be taken public. More recently, on Jan 18th 2007, Aviation Week was the first news source to release details that "China performed a successful anti-satellite (asat) weapons test at more than 500 miles altitude on Jan. 11, destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic kill vehicle launched onboard a ballistic missile".

Aviation Week offers industry coverage (via news, data, analytics & conferences ) of the global aeropsace defense industry. Competitors of Aviation Week include such companies as Jane's Defence Weekly and Flight International. The Aviation Week portfolio includes magazines, events, a public website (aviationweek.com - received major upgrade January 2007), premium websites (AWIN and MRO Prospector), newsletters, and the World Aerospace Database (formerly know as the World Aviation Directory or 'The WAD'). Aviation Week is owned by McGraw-Hill.